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Kaulig President: Cindric Incident Caused Six-Figures Worth of Damage

Toby Christie

Jamie Harms-Imagn Images

NASCAR dished out the penalties for Austin Cindric's intentional retaliation on Kaulig Racing driver Ty Dillon from the early portion of last Sunday's NASCAR Cup Series event at Circuit of the Americas. While many wondered if Cindric would be handed a one-race suspension for hooking the right-rear of Dillon's car, and that penalty was reportedly on the table in the NASCAR competition department meeting, the sanctioning body ultimately decided to only issue a point deduction and fine to Cindric.

According to NASCAR, the lower speeds of Circuit of the Americas, and the fact that the incident didn't even draw a caution led to the sanctioning body not sitting Cindric, the full-time driver of the No. 2 Team Penske Ford Mustang Dark Horse for a race.

While the debate raged on via social media, many argued that a suspension for Cindric would have been unjust because Dillon's car didn't even suffer much damage in the incident. Well, it turns out the car was a little more damaged than it appeared, cosmetically.

Chris Rice, the President of Kaulig Racing, conducted an interview with SiriusXM NASCAR Radio's The Morning Drive on Thursday, where he scoffed at the claims that the damages to his team's No. 10 Chevrolet weren't severe. Rice estimates the damages suffered in the incident with Cindric to be in the six figures.

"It still was a big number for Kaulig Racing, money wise," Rice stated. "I know I read something yesterday that it didn't tear up the car, wasn't that much money, didn't hurt that car. I mean, it was a big number. So, I hate it. I hate it for our race team."

Rice continued by breaking down the damages.

"You know, front clip, upright on the right, front nose, bumper, hood, right front fender, about five to eight positions in the race, and you know, whatever points that is. So, I mean, you could keep going deeper and deeper when you look at that," Rice explained. "But you know, if you, you go back and watch it when he, after he hit the wall, he did hit the wall on the front straightaway with the right front, he goes down in Turn 1 and the right front wouldn't turn. They went a lap down fixing it. And then we took two whole Stages to get back that lap and get back to the field. So, you know, it's gonna be six figures for sure by the time you fix it and it's out of service and things like that. And not saying that that couldn't have happened any other time, but for that wreck, that's what it was."

While Rice stopped short of giving his opinion on what the penalties issued to Cindric should have been, he made it clear that Kaulig Racing doesn't condone intentionally crashing a competitor on the track.

"I'll tell you from a race team side, if my driver does something that I feel like that is, I don't wanna say unlawful, but you know, shouldn't happen in NASCAR because we are the biggest sport in America, we are professionals, you know, we take it up with our driver ourself," Rice said. "And I told Ty Dillon that, I've had that conversation with AJ [Allmendinger] that we don't do that. I know you get frustrated and I understand, you know, and I've looked at all the data, I've looked at everything. I got all the information, had a really good conversation with [NASCAR's] Elton [Sawyer] yesterday, and I appreciate Elton Sawyer a lot, a lot more than people know. I appreciate him having conversations with me. I just, man, it's when you look at things like that, that's just tough to talk about, right? Like, because no matter what I say or what I do, it's not right. But I can tell you that we don't condone it at Kaulig Racing. I don't want our drivers to do something like that."

While Dillon started the season off with a very strong performance at Daytona International Speedway, where he ultimately finished 14th, has now had two disappointing finishes in a row with a 29th-place finish at Atlanta, and 28th at Circuit of the Americas. Both runs were ruined by incidents in the early portion of each race.

With Dillon by the wayside, Kaulig Racing still had high hopes for the day, as AJ Allmendinger, the driver of the team's No. 16 Chevrolet, is one of the best all-around road racers in the sport today. However, Allmendinger suffered a disappointing 30th-place finish despite leading two laps, and being near the front of the field for the majority of the race.

For those wondering what happened to Allmendinger, who faded from the top-five to finish 30th on the final run of the race, Rice explained that it was an issue with the car's right front tire.

While Rice, his team, and Allmendinger initially thought it was a bad tire from Goodyear, it turned out after the were able to dissect the situation back at the shop this week, that the tire somehow wasn't tightened fully, which led to a bad vibration, which sent Allmendinger plummeting in the running order.

"The right front tire, and we haven't dug into why it was, it was just a little bit loose," Rice explained. "It ended up being a little bit loose, which made it vibrate, harmonic, and it felt like a really bad set of tires. [AJ] couldn't turn left like he needed to turn left. And it really hurt him."

Rice reiterated that front changer Austin Holland didn't make a mistake on the final pit stop of the race. The team suspects there may have been an issue with the air gun, which the team leases from NASCAR on a weekly basis.

"Our pit crew is phenomenal. They've done a really good job. It was nothing [that they did], all the data, everything we've seen, it should have been tight," Rice said. "We don't, we haven't quite figured out why, whether it was a gun malfunction, whether it got weaker or what, but all of the parts and pieces did their job.

"The nut went back to what they call the lock, and it just sat there and vibrated the last entire run. And AJ felt it as soon as we put him on there, coming into the last stop. He felt it, [and] as soon as he went out, caution came out. He had fallen back the fifth. We hadn't run that bad all day. And he was like, man, something's wrong. These tires are horrible. And they had a chance to pit. We didn't, we elected it not to pit. Don't know that that would've made a difference with what we know now, but we don't know whether it was a gun or whatever. I talked to Elton [Sawyer] about that yesterday. They're gonna check that out also for us because we leased those guns from NASCAR."

After a hard-luck opening three races to the 2025 NASCAR Cup Series season, the Kaulig Racing duo of Dillon, and Allmendinger still rank a respectable 24th and 25th in the championship standings. They'll look to have a clean race in Sunday's Shriners Children's 500 at Phoenix Raceway. If that can happen, they could begin to claw their way up the standings.

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Toby Christie
TOBY CHRISTIE

Toby Christie is the Editor-in-Chief of Racing America. He has 15 years of experience as a motorsports journalist and has been with Racing America since 2023.

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